Spam Filter For Your Brain - Episode 19
I think in these modern times, one of the worst things that you can accuse someone of is being needy. Such a dreadful bucket of paint is the image I have coming to mind to throw over someone. There is no one out there in the world who adores being labelled as needy.
But what's really interesting about this is the aspersion that we cast upon others and sometimes ourselves. I think we've pretty often conflated the idea of being needy with getting our needs met.
It is difficult for so many of us to clearly define what we request to happen in any given situation. To ask someone else to do something for us, to ask for things, to slow down or to speed up, to provide us with more space, to rearrange a time, to change the menu. How often have you eaten something that didn't agree with you, just because it was polite? Just look at the number of ways that we try and diminish ourselves to try and not be an imposition on other people. And it is a default response for so many of us to try and not be a problem rather than to try and take up our own space, which is a wild way of the world operates.
If you think about it if everybody is going around trying to bend and twist themselves into "not being too much of a bother", and very few people out there who are just really comfortable with saying, "Hey, this is what I need from this situation."
And just that simple idea of asking for your for any one of your needs or all of your needs, to be met can be also hugely intimidating as a prospect.(you don't have to do them when all at once)
That you could possibly impose or cause someone else to have to go out of their way for you. Or that because it all seems like one great big mountain, what we tend to do is not get any of it. And I wonder if there's anywhere where you could try and make a bit more space for that and practice that it could be possible for you.
So I wonder if this week, as you go about your day, you could practice being awkward, being difficult. Just go out of your way for something really trivial that you don't that doesn't matter to you. So something could you in a restaurant ask for them to change the fork? When you are on a bus could you ask to swap seats with somebody?
If you are on a zoom, call, could you ask for could you turn your camera off because you don't want it to be on in that moment? Could you ask your partner to do a chore around the house that you were going to do anyway? But it's really little. And you think it is not worth asking.
All of these things I want you to make very, very, very small. And so you have no emotional attachment to the outcome. But what you could just do is rehearse the idea of practicing someone saying no and you surviving. Try and create a scenario where your brain doesn't associate rejection with danger and try and see if there are ways that you could experiment just put yourself out there and asking and seeing what comes of your requests.
Do you feel free to drop me an email, I want to hear it of like the most microscopic, most silly, most brilliant outcomes and make it as small as you possibly can and just make a little thread of connectivity in your brain that it's possible that you could be someone who asks for things.
I hope this has been useful for you this week.
I hope you have a gorgeous, gorgeous week. And please do not forget to take some time out for self-care.
If you want to pass this on to anyone who would find them useful I'd be really grateful. If you'd like to leave a review on iTunes that would be super useful. And please do you feel free to pass the stuff on to a friend or join any of the coaching courses over at SelfCareSchool.co.uk
Have a gorgeous week, people.